Classes at Stellaris Academy weren't as magical as they sounded, at least not in the cinematic way Soren's brain kept expecting, because reality didn't come with sweeping music or dramatic camera angles.
Instead, it came with stiff chairs, scratchy parchment, professors who expected you to copy diagrams until your wrist hurt, and the slow crawl of time as you tried not to yawn in front of people who could probably ruin your reputation with a single word.
Especially not for Class F.
The lectures he attended were basic, painfully basic, and Soren suspected it was because this class existed as the academy's safety net, a place meant to catch underperforming students before they broke entirely, which meant the curriculum had to be broad enough that nobody drowned immediately.
Still, he had one advantage, and it was the kind of advantage that felt unfair in a way he couldn't quite enjoy properly yet.
With [Library of Memories], he only needed to glance at a textbook once to recall every word, every diagram, every footnote, the pages slotting into his mind as if they belonged there.
Written tests seemed like they would be a joke.
Unfortunately, comprehension was another matter.
Even if he remembered everything, there were subjects he couldn't fully grasp yet, especially anything that relied on the world's internal logic rather than raw memorisation, the kind of concepts the game had flattened into tooltips and numbers.
Magic Theory was one.
And the class he was in now was another.
Demonology.
The professor, a woman with sharp eyes and a voice that carried without effort, stood at the front of the room with chalk dust clinging faintly to her fingers.
"Does anyone know the difference between demons and monsters?" she asked, gaze sweeping over the class.
Predictably, not a single hand went up.
Most students avoided eye contact with her the way they avoided it with Soren, but for different reasons: because one kind of attention meant social discomfort and the other meant being called on.
The professor paused, as if waiting for someone to surprise her, then continued smoothly.
"…The key difference is intelligence," she said, turning to write a single word on the board in neat strokes. "Think of it as the difference between humans and animals. Demons, like humans—"
She kept going, voice steady, explaining how monsters followed instinct, how demons strategised, how the presence of language alone changed the entire threat profile of a creature, and Soren listened carefully, because for everyone else this was baseline knowledge, but for him, a former player, every detail felt like opening a drawer he had always assumed was empty.
In the game, things like this were simplified to menus and tooltips, neat little labels that helped you optimise damage and decide which element to bring to a fight.
Monsters.
Demons.
Boss.
Elite.
Weak to X.
Resists Y.
Do Z to defeat it.
In ❰The Knight of Stellaris❱, they never really delved into the magic system or the ecology of the demon realm in a way that mattered beyond combat, because it was an RPG, and the point was progression.
Magic was a skill you pressed a button for.
Enemies were things to be killed.
Here, everything had rules, logic, texture, and the professor spoke as if she expected them to understand those rules, not because it would help them pass a test, but because misunderstanding could get them killed.
Even the smallest details made him oddly excited, and it was a dangerous kind of excitement, the kind that tempted him to lean in, to care, to become invested in the world's mechanics the same way he had been invested in the game, because caring about the world meant caring about what happened to it.
He tried to keep his reaction muted.
He didn't want to be the kind of person who looked too eager, because eagerness drew attention, and attention led to involvement, and involvement led to being needed.
Still, he couldn't stop his mind from becoming engrossed in the professor's examples.
Take goblins.
In TKS, they were weak early-game mobs, green, ugly and barely worth the SP it took to swing a sword, something you farmed for a few coins and then forgot existed.
In reality, according to the professor, they were terrifyingly human, armed with rusty blades, smart enough to hunt in packs, cruel enough to torture for fun, and organised enough to call reinforcements if you let one escape.
It was unsettling.
Yet it was also amazing.
For someone like Soren, who had spent a large chunk of his life reading wiki entries and memorising lore because it was easier than dealing with his own world, learning about this one firsthand felt like discovering hidden content that had always been there, waiting behind the game's limitations.
The bell eventually rang.
"And with that, we'll end class here. Be careful on your way out," the professor said with a faint smile.
Students stood in a wave, relief moving through the room like a physical thing, and Soren snapped his notebook shut and rose with them, trying to blend into the current.
'Finally,' he thought, and it was the kind of relief that had nothing to do with Demonology and everything to do with the fact that sitting still while your mind buzzed was exhausting.
But he wasn't done for the day yet.
There was one last thing he needed to confirm, something that would determine how peaceful his new life could realistically be, because hope was dangerous, yet living without even a shred of it was worse.
••✦ ♡ ✦•••
The Martial Studies building loomed tall and wide, its stone corridors echoing with shouts and the clashing ring of metal on metal, the sound sharp enough that Soren felt it in his teeth.
He made his way along the hallway and tried to look like he belonged, shoulders relaxed, pace steady, expression neutral, because standing out in a building full of people who trained to fight for a living sounded like a bad idea.
Stellaris Academy had four majors, and even thinking about them made his brain slip into "wiki mode," the part of him that catalogued information compulsively.
Arcane Studies trained mages.
Martial Studies trained knights.
Divine Studies trained priests, paladins, and healers.
And Academic Studies… existed for nobles who didn't want to get dirty.
It sounded strange on paper, an Academic Studies major in a world that was constantly bracing for war with the demon realm, but from a worldbuilding perspective, it made perfect sense, because Stellaris wasn't just a school; it was a political object.
The world of TKS was medieval fantasy, stitched together by power and territory, and Stellaris Academy was complicated.
Politically neutral, yet intertwined with all three great kingdoms: the human Kingdom of Fialova, the beastkin Kingdom of Einhardt, and the elven Kingdom of Yggdrasil.
Stellaris existed between them, a buffer zone, unaffiliated yet essential.
That neutrality came with strings, because neutrality always did, and one of those strings was nobility, funding, prestige, and the necessity of keeping powerful families happy.
To keep that balance, Stellaris had to cater to the wealthy, which meant creating paths that allowed them to send their children here without the indignity of sweating alongside commoners.
Hence, Academic Studies.
Realistically, how many haughty nobles wanted to roll around in the dirt practising grapples with someone whose family name didn't even matter, especially when money could buy distance from danger?
Even with the demon realm, Valefor, growing more active, the wealthy always found ways to avoid the sharpest edges.
Soren's mouth twitched faintly.
'Honestly, that's not much different from Earth either.'
Not that any of this mattered to him right now, not in the grand political sense, because he wasn't here to analyse the academy's structure; he was here for one reason, and the thought sat like a stone in his gut.
'Is the protagonist actually here?'
He stopped near a pillar where he could see the main flow of students without being directly in it, and he waited, trying to look casual, trying to act like he was simply killing time waiting for a friend rather than staking his entire future peace on the answer to a single question.
Ten minutes went by.
Then fifteen.
Students passed by in groups, chatting about practice, about rankings, about who had taken a bruising hit yesterday and who had landed a clean throw, their voices bright with the kind of energy Soren didn't remember ever having at eighteen.
He listened anyway, not because he cared about their conversations, but because listening gave him something to do with his hands, something to do with his attention, a way to avoid drifting into thoughts he didn't want.
Now and then, someone would look at him and look away again, the same avoidance as earlier, and the pattern pulled at the back of his mind like a thread he couldn't yet see.
Then…
A flash of blonde caught his eye.
Soren's head lifted.
There he was.
Tall, blue-eyed, hair bright as sunlight, moving through the corridor with a kind of unthinking confidence.
He wasn't arrogant or performative, but simply wearing a steady posture of someone who didn't expect the world to shove him aside.
The protagonist himself.
.
[Alex]
Age: 18
Gender: Male
Race: Human
.
Soren's knees almost buckled with relief.
"Hahhhhh…" he exhaled, the sound long and shaky, as if he had been holding his breath since the moment he woke up in that hospital bed.
He slumped back against the wall, grinning weakly, his shoulders finally dropping.
"Thank God."
The name was the default option from the game.
Alex, no surname, as he was a commoner by origin, and in the game that had always been part of his appeal, the ordinary name attached to an extraordinary role.
More importantly, even without an affinity bar, even without hovering tooltips, Soren could feel it in the way his mind snapped to the same conclusion it always had while playing, because the protagonist's defining trait wasn't his name, it was the power that sat beneath his existence like a golden core.
[Divinity].
That golden force was what made him the Hero, the one chosen by the Goddess of Time herself, the one the story bent around whether he asked for it or not.
In-game, every monster and demon was weak to [Divinity].
Here, Soren didn't know exactly how it worked yet, not in the precise mechanical sense, but he didn't care, because he only needed the conclusion.
It meant, as far as he was concerned, one simple thing.
He didn't have to do it.
He didn't have to fight.
He didn't have to train until his body broke.
He didn't have to save anyone.
A strange warmth loosened inside his chest, and underneath it there was a quieter, darker undertone he refused to look at directly, the old, instinctive terror of being the person left holding responsibility when everyone else stepped back, the fear of failing someone again, of being blamed again, of watching something collapse and knowing you were nearby when it happened.
He pushed that away with the relief in his hands.
'Perfect. You do you, Alex.'
A smile tugged at his lips, small but real.
'I'll just stay out of the way and enjoy the ride.'
With his worries finally eased, Soren pushed off the wall and started walking back toward the dorms, steps lighter than they had been since the moment he first set foot in this world, not because life was suddenly easy, but because for the first time since waking, he could see a path that didn't end with him being forced into someone else's fate.
————「❤︎」————